Creating Art for Licensing - Make it Easier on Yourself

The Skinny if you don't want to read more: Paint and scan the art in steps. Nuff said :-)

These are acrylic paint on cotton canvas panel. I only used one palette knife. The small square ones are 6" x 6" panel and the larger one with the two gold pears is 9"x 12" panel. These are part of an 'apples and pears' collection I am working on.

I paint small - so I can scan them it at a HIGH resolution. Normally If I were painting these to sell in a gallery or some place similar, I would block in the darks and work up to the light colors. I would have painted the background first over the stems and then paint the stems on top of the background, cuz that is easy.

BUT, for art licensing you are probably going to want just the pear/apple alone with no background. It is much easier to remove a white background in photoshop, THEN go back and paint in a background.

One more thought: If a manufacturer wants a different background - this may make that easier to accomplish. Especially if what I have shown them has the pear/apple on a separate layer already in photoshop (or illustrator).

I would LOVE! it if you would share how you handle art for licensing. If you don't want that to be public - shoot me an email anntroe@cox.net. Thanks so much for reading and sharing :-D

You might also like:
Palette Knife Pumpkins      Painting: Breaking the Rules      Changing Medium and Style

Make my day and follow this blog :-D - links in the right-hand column of each page.

THANK YOU Middleville Michigan

Waving hello and thanking my collector in Middleville MI for purchasing these two greeting cards. I really appreciate all of you for supporting my art. Buy it here:
http://pixels.com/profiles/ann-troe.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=85692

New Flip Book with Hyperlinks

Thrilled to be part of the Check Advantage Family!

This post has 2 parts.

Part 1. DOING the Happy Dance! Check Advantage licensed several of my images / designs! WOOP!

(To purchase Checks, Covers and Labels click an image in the flip book or click here: https://www.checkadvantage.com/ann-troe)

Part 2. You've been asking about how do I create hyperlinks in a flip book. I will give you the gist of how I did it using InDesign CS6 - note: if you use Microsoft Word - Go to Flipsnack's FAQ (http://www.flipsnack.com/faq/) for the work around - The PDF you generate from Word doesn't have web compatible colors and won't work.

Set up your pages in InDesign. Click on an image or text frame you want to ad a hyperlink to.
Go to the file menu at the top - under "Window" scroll down to "Interactive", choose "Hyperlinks".
Put in the URL you want it to link to. That's it! Here is a link to Adobe.com if you need a little more help or a visual http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using

NOTE: The yellow square with FREE Shipping on each page is an interactive button that I set up in InDesign - they do not work in the flip book. If you know or figure out how to make that work - let me know! It may just be that it isn't compatible with Flipsnack. http://www.flipsnack.com/

WHY do I bother to set up a flip book when I could just link to a PDF file? I get more viewers, better SEO - and it's fun :-D Since June 30 2013, when I posted my flip book portfolio it has had 1,094  Unique viewers. That number is a combination of my website, blog & flipsnack page. 690 views are from the flipsnack page! With a paid flipbook - they submit it to search engines, pin it, etc.

You might also like this post about my Flip book Portfolio http://annietroe.blogspot.com/2013/07/flipbook-portfolio.html

THANKS for reading & commenting!

THANK YOU to a collector in Anchorage, AK!

Just a short post to send a shout out to a collector in Anchorage, Alaska. I really appreciate you purchasing a print of my Violet Poppies watercolor painting. Doing the happy dance!
Click here to purchase wrapped canvas, framed prints, metal prints, greeting cards and iPhone cases. http://pixels.com/profiles/ann-troe.htmlhttp://pixels.com/profiles/ann-troe.html

Changing Medium and Style - a Good Idea?

 

Only Amateur Artists Change their Style...

I thought you might find this interesting.
I change styles and medium. I know of artists who don't do that.

Some say changing it up makes it harder to brand yourself. I have read comments that only amateur artist change their style. Many fine artist feel they need a style to survive.

I can't argue with any of that.

So why do I change styles and/or medium? It keeps me excited and challenged. Each has a different strategy, tools and touch to creating the final images. It keeps me fresh and on my toes :-D

I am sure many of you make art because you enjoy the process as much as the final product. Me too! It is SO FUN to loose track of time while creating something. I call it getting into the zone. Changing it up does that for me.

SO I am posting this in hopes of finding out with your comments here (or on social media). How do you stay fresh. What inspires you!

Thanks for taking a peak into my world and sharing a bit of yours.

FREE file transfer - Nifty grid ap - FREE watermark

 

I love FREE and I am a cheater pants.

FREE file transfer: Tara Reed posted this on her blog, but I want to make sure you all know about WeTransfer https://www.wetransfer.com/.  You can transfer up to 2 GB FREE - THAT my friends is very useful in the Art Licensing biz. I have a paid YouSendit account (now Hightail). I may just let it lapse. I don't mind and ad in exchange for FREE.

Nifty grid ap: Yes, I am a cheater pants and use this grid ap pictured above on my iPad. You may be getting used to my cheater pants ways, as I admitted to using black in this post http://anniesdoodlebugz.blogspot.com/2013/07/breaking-rules-do-you.html. Here is the link to AccuView $2.00 app https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/accuview/id407578464?mt=8

FREE watermark: My last post on copyright infringement - I'm famous in China led me to this gem. PicMarker. It is FREE. I haven't tried it out yet. http://picmarkr.com/. 

• Have any of you tried PicMaker?
• Do you watermark your images? I don't, but I am thinking about it.

Let me know what you think of these websites and aps. You all are the best!